Risker, 02/06/2011 00:53:
I think the more important part of this announcement
is the resolution on
images of identifiable people [...]
I agree. It's also the first time (if memory serves me well and if I
understand it correctly) that the board asks for a specific content
policy of a specific project to be changed in some direction:
«Strengthen [...] the current Commons guideline», compared to «_continue
to practice_ rigorous active curation of content» in the other
resolution. I'm not sure I like it, although the spirit of the
resolutions is balanced and agreeable.
It should probably be emphasized that this would apply
equally to projects
that host "fair use" or other images, and is not simply an expectation on
Commons.
That's not what the resolution says, though. I think that it would be
more interesting to have some clear legal guideline to understand what's
/legal/ in different countries (at least the most important ones, or the
countries whose citizens more frequently ask deletion of images to the
WMF), because this is something the community is often not able to
produce and the WMF has the indisputable right to keep the projects
lawful (at least in some countries, which are tough to define; see e.g.
the quite generic draft
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Legal_Policies#Applicable_Law>).
Instead, we'll now have a «Consent of the subject (who is a non-public
figure) is required even for photographs taken in public places in the
following countries [...] (incomplete list)», a "Citation needed" in
"Legal issues" section and finally some links to random websites about
some (very few) countries.
I don't expect this to improve much on Commons, not to speak of other
projects; I know people who work in television companies and it's clear
that even professionals don't know all the details of the law, because
it's just too complex.
Nemo